Is HDR Photography Dead?

In many situations, new cameras do indeed render HDR Photography redundant.

We use HDR to increase the “dymanic range” of our work – capturing extra detail in the highlights and shadows. Older cameras had a limited range, was was proved by lightening an under exposed shot. The “noise” would be intolerable, making a mosaic like pattern in the dark areas.

However, newer cameras allow you to brighten darks areas, and to an extent, recover burned highlights sufficiently to get away with just 1 exposure of most scenes.

In this tutorial we shoot a traditional HDR subject, a cathedral interior in Manchester. The shadows and bright windows usually have a huge dynamic range which HDR was perfect for.

It only applies to RAW Images by the way – if you’re still shooting JPG, you are in the wrong place;-)

The photo was taken, hand held, with a Canon 5D Mark 3 – watch and see how much detail we can rescue using just LIGHTROOM and no other tools